Courtlandt Place

Courtlandt Place followed a St. Louis model, the "private place," a small walled-off enclave built as a refuge from the disorder of the growing city. The Courtlandt Improvement Company bought the land in 1906, and the first houses went up in 1909 along a one-block divided boulevard. Gateways at each end kept out all but residents, and deed restrictions set land use, minimum cost and house size; owners formed the Courtlandt Association in 1912 and enforced them until the 1930s. The houses were built for entertaining at home, and the early residents were Houston's old elite, often related.

What the plaque says

Courtlandt Place Platted in 1907 on land once owned by area pioneer Mrs. Obedience Smith, Courtlandt Place was established as a private neighborhood for Houston's elite. Encompassing 15.47 acres of land, it is a showcase of impressive homes designed by some of the most prominent Texas architects of the early twentieth century, including Birdsall P. Briscoe, Alfred Finn, John Staub, Sanguinet * Staats, and Olle J. Lorehn. The Courtlandt Place neighborhood was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 0.6 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 1.0 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• The Menil Collection — 1.1 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Emancipation Park — 1.1 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.

More markers nearby

• San Jacinto High School — 0.5 mi
• The Houston Light Guard — 0.6 mi
• William Daniel Durham — 1.0 mi
• Robert Barr — 1.0 mi